Dead Stones [manxman] [boyxboy]

Troublous tenants

After one right and two lefts turns for Luke’s house, the day was still an aimless, clear-skied Friday. His house was the flaking green bungalow with a yellow lawn in the cul de sac of unfenced duplexes and green lawns. A neighbor had demanded he clean up the front lawn, screaming something about property values. Luke shrugged it off like he shrugged off demands from men with pencil moustaches. Besides, his tenants, Miranda and Robert did not seem to care about the wretched front lawn or the back yard. Four hundred bucks for rent in West LA for a ‘charming’ room was good enough reason not to care too much about the impotent kid landlord.

He left his car parked and unlocked in the driveway. He recalled that the steering wheel had been hardy of late. A tempest of worries flared on all the squeaks and creaks of Lisa’s old car. By the time he was weaving his head around the wind chimes hanging by the front door, any thought to doing basic auto repair fizzled.

He opened the door, and the chimes clinked a splashy welcome. Yes, welcome to this grotto of grief that he should sell for a sum that would pay more than once over the tuition to Columbia University. His footsteps glided across the beige tiles, and the house reverberated his sense of stifling inaction.

The corridors were adorned with angel figurines—papier-mâché, stick figure, crystal, porcelain—Lisa’s leftover superstitions from her ultra-Calvinist upbringing. More pictures of middle class contentment were sprawled over the walls. Baby Luke. Baby Carly. Trent looking smarmy in a suit. Lisa looking wide in an empire waist dress.

The smell of cinnamon and bread blooming thickly in the air reminded Luke to warn Miranda of her baking messes and the week-old dishes in the sink. But the quietude overwhelmed his senses, and the living room seemed vacuously large. And the idea of growing tall over the little lady and brandishing a landlordly authority became suddenly pointless.

A gloom descending, he tiptoed towards his room. Rechecking his Go problems due for tomorrow’s lesson sounded good, until he opened the door. The French blinds were closed, permanently, but light seeped stubbornly from its crevices. He felt clammy and winded, and removed his shirt and settled into the shadows ribbing across his bed and again closed his eyes and dreamed of Lisa.

Lisa had wanted to die at home, not alone in a hospital. Luke could only agree. In her death slog Lisa called him Trent, called him Carly, called him ungrateful bastard. She tasted the blandness of his stews, felt the coldness of his fingers sponging her for a bath, smelt the fetidness of the room he had just cleaned. He left his hair grow out after Lisa had said how much he looked like his father. Her death he long awaited as he hummed lullabies to her delirious apologies for being a bad wife.

Luke played the filial son, stoically and quietly, until she whispered, “Because of you Carly died, then you turned out gay. Why should your dad come back home? What does he have to come home to?”

Luke thought hard for a moment. “Hmm interesting question although I’m the wrong person to ask. Let me see if I can tackle this… I’m not sure I have much to do with his reasons, just a conjecture. For one, he has not shown any displeasure with my sexuality or my involvement in Carly’s death.  Maybe he does so privately? Is this the basis of your judgment?   Maybe the task of taking care of you is too daunting.  It won’t be out of the ordinary. I’ve read that the proportion of men who leave their sick wives is lot higher than women who leave their sick husbands. Mostly likely due to social inhibitions of men taking on the role of caretaking. It’s a fascinating study in gender relations really—”

“The cancer won’t kill me. Your rambling on and on definitely will.”

“I’m sorry. I over-spoke.”

He was truly sorry for the baldhead, the sunken eyes and the loose skin gathering at the lips. He was sorry for the morphine and its effect of emptying her into the dregs of a woman. He did not want her to go away too early. He could not risk his voice vanquishing her, so he resolved to keep his speech to ten words or less around her. He pressed Lisa’s edematous hands, felt its bones and the tendons, felt the bluntness of his guilt heaping upon guilt.